Discovery of a Strange Phenomenon on the Planet Neptune.
Recently, scientists have made a bizarre discovery happening on the planet Neptune. Its summer season, which has been ongoing since 2005, shows no signs of ending anytime soon.
Six powerful telescopes have been directed towards Neptune, the mysterious planet in our solar system, to observe and uncover the truth about what is truly happening there.
With a distance of 4.5 billion kilometers from Earth, an average temperature of approximately -220 degrees Celsius, and enveloped in perpetual darkness, observing the eighth planet of the Solar System from Earth is extremely challenging.
Therefore, the leading research team, headed by astronomer Michael Roman from the University of Leicester (UK), along with their colleagues, had to compile data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, two Subaru telescopes, the Keck and Gemini North telescopes in Hawaii, and the Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The summer season in Neptune’s southern hemisphere began in 2005 and is projected to last until 2045. Due to Neptune’s orbit being more than 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, it experiences a year equivalent to 165 Earth years.
The seasons on this planet also last much longer compared to Earth, with each season extending for over 40 years.
However, during the past two decades when the planet transitioned into summer in its southern hemisphere, astronomers observed a significant drop in its average temperature, reaching as low as 8 degrees Celsius.
“This change is quite surprising because we observed Neptune at the start of its summer in the southern hemisphere and predicted a gradual increase in temperature, not a decrease,” said Michael Roman, a PhD student at the University of Leicester and the lead author of the study.
According to the observation results, the temperature change on Neptune is not uniform. Measurements of the planet’s stratospheric layer, the second lowest layer of its atmosphere, revealed a warming trend in the southern polar region of Neptune.
This dataset, which only includes data from a two-year period between 2018 and 2020, shows a rapid warming of approximately 11 degrees Celsius difference. Such warming at both poles has never been observed on Neptune before.
Currently, the exact cause of the “cold summer” and the sudden heating of the southern polar region remains unknown to the researchers.
It could be due to complex chemical changes within the stratospheric layer or the entire atmosphere, or it might involve random and intricate weather patterns unlike any other planet in the Solar System.
Scientists hope that future observations will shed more light on the mysteries of this distant planet. Despite its cold and desolate appearance, NASA suspects the presence of an underwater ocean beneath the icy shell of Neptune.
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